


Breaking Silver

by mangochi



Category: Almost Human
Genre: Alternate Canon, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Role Reversal, Dom/sub Undertones, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Power Dynamics, Revolution
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-04-29
Updated: 2014-05-03
Packaged: 2018-01-20 09:01:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,863
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1504523
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mangochi/pseuds/mangochi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In a world where the androids have taken over, John's too hard and stubborn to submit to the new regime, but one day he's assigned to his new handler, who's not quite like the other bots.<br/>**Ratings may change **</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> [Original Post](http://mangopuffs.tumblr.com/post/80584872711/hunterangelblog-robots-and-electric-sheep)  
>  Do see the original post for more context. REVOLUTION AUUUUUUU

The room is white and hard, all sharp edges and corners that are designed to bring discomfort to its occupants. It’s bare of all furnishings except a narrow strip of padding in the corner that John suspects is supposed to serve as a cot, and a sealed vent against the bottom of the wall that he spent twenty minutes prying at in vain before giving up, fingertips scraped and throbbing from the edges of the metal frame.

The walls of the cell are flawlessly clean, and John hates them with a fervor that no inanimate object rightfully deserves. He runs his hand across the gleaming surface and takes some dark satisfaction in seeing the rusty smudge of dried blood he leaves behind on the square panels. Something human in this mechanical hellhole.

He’s been in the holding cell for hours- he lost count after the first eighty-five minutes- and he knows distantly that he’s supposed to be hungry, thirsty, needing to take a piss. But all he feels is a chilled numbness in more than his body and the sinking knowledge that once he leaves these eggshell walls, he’s not coming back.

John leans back against the corner where he’s currently huddled and stares across the room at the blank wall on the other side. “Damn it,” he mutters, thunking his head back until a dull pain radiates through his skull from the impact. The cut on his temple’s reopened sometime without him noticing, and fresh blood shines on his knuckles when he wipes absently at it. A souvenir from the the security bot who swung at him without a second thought when he refused to leave the laborer pens. Then it punched him again in the side for good measure when he was finally dragged out of the gates.

Gingerly, he probes at his ribs and winces. Fractured, he thinks grimly, feeling out the swollen area on his side. At least two, maybe only three if he’s lucky.

John hasn’t been very lucky lately.

There’s a faint tap on the door, which blends in so well with the rest of the walls that John can barely make out its outline, before the panels slide back and a bot walks in. Standard MX model, John can see, bulky with black armor and pale eyes pinning him down expressionlessly.

“Up,” the bot says abruptly, its voice buzzing slightly, and it gestures with the barrel of its rifle in case John somehow manages to misinterpret the command.

John stays where he is. The bot’s face doesn’t change, but it strides across the room in two brisk steps and swings its leg out in a hard kick. The force behind the blow is carefully moderated, and it lands on John’s prosthetic, but the impact is still enough to send him sprawling onto his side with a pained grunt.

“On your knees,” the bot barks, clearly changing its mind about John standing, and John glares up at it defiantly. If he’s going to die anyway, he’d rather it be on his own terms, however pitiful those terms may be.

“C’mon, you son of a bitch,” he spits out, tasting blood from his newly split lip. “Useless hunk of plastic. That all you got?”

Apparently, he reevaluates three seconds later, it isn’t.

The bot has him flat on his stomach before he can draw breath for another insult, the side of his face pressed against the unforgiving floor as a hard knee jams mercilessly into the small of his back and the bot tugs his arms hard behind his back. He feels the bot’s bruising grip on his forearms just before icy metal snaps around his wrists once more, sealing them together in a magnetic field he can’t break free from.

He feels himself flushing hot in humiliation when the bot hauls him up by the back of his shirt so that he’s on his knees in submission. The bots have some kind of fixation on kneeling- they probably recognize it as some primitive form of surrender, and even though John knows that it’s nothing more than a gesture, it still rips and tears at something within him.

The bot jostles him to his feet after a few seconds, and John stands unsteadily, his face burning and his hands clenching in useless fists beneath the heavy restraints. A shove between his shoulder blades, detached and impassive, sends him stumbling towards the open door. His boots clang on the steel floor of the hallway beyond, and he keeps his head down as the bot steers him forward by his elbow.

Sixteen steps forward, left turn, eight steps forward, right turn.

He wonders if, by some miracle, he can outrun the MX if it comes down to it. It’s a pipe dream, a stupid delusion that he immediately hates himself for even considering, but still…..

It’d be a faster death than handing himself over to the bots’ synthetic mercy.

“You’re a quiet one,” he says, just to piss the MX off. Or, at least, he likes to think that he can get under their silicon skin. “But you know what they say about those.”

“It is inadvisable to speak during transport,” comes the response from behind him.

 _Shut up or be shut up,_ John interprets. “Just trying to break the ice here.” He tests his restraints automatically and tries to not be too disappointed when the bot tightens its grip on his arm. “Kinda nervous.”

“There is no need for you to feel anxiety over the selection process. If you are deemed suitable for recreational work outside the repair crews, you will be assigned to the appropriate unit.” The MX’s voice is cool and clipped, the speech sounding more like a recording than part of a conversation. A walking instruction manual with a big gun that pokes into the small of John’s back again when he tries to slow his steps. Delay the inevitable by one more second.

They pass another pair in the corridor, a woman in white trailing behind her synthetic handler. Her hair is sleek and pinned back in a tight bun, eyes cast demurely down as she clutches at the datapads in her arms, and she walks with the air of something trying her hardest to not be noticed. She’s pale, but well-fed, her smooth face a startling contrast from John’s bruised and dirty skin.

The two MXs carry on silently, with no indication other than a slight blip of red light on the other bot’s face that anything happened at all, but John casts a glance at the woman as he passes. She meets his gaze for a split second, a flicker of dark brown that conveys something like pity and mangled relief before it drops to the floor again.

Then the duo is gone and John’s MX is shoving him around a corner, bringing him face to face with a steel door. The bot raises its hand, passing over the scanner, and the door slides open. John’s nudged forward over the threshold, just enough for the door to close behind him, and then he’s alone.

He hears the door lock behind him as he stumbles to a halt in the center of the room, heart pounding so quickly that he can barely decipher between the beats. This chamber is just as white and stupidly empty as his cell, just barely larger. The strange, omnipresent lighting has no true source, and he can see it pulsing from the panels beneath his feet, sense its glow from the walls in his peripherals.

"Detective Kennex." The voice is smooth and unexpectedly human for a bot, and John forces himself to look up, dried blood pulling on the skin around his eyes as he squints at the bot sitting at the end of the white room.

It’s built smaller than the model who pushed him in, darker, with blinding blue eyes and mild features that gain John’s mistrust instantly. It’s the special ones he has to look out for, the ones that stand out from the sea of blank faces and metallic voices. The ones who can’t be predicted by algorithms and coding.

"Your record is outstanding," the bot tells him, crossing its legs casually. Circuitry lights blue on its temple as it contemplates John, long fingers stroking its jaw briefly in human mimicry.

"Was," John grits out, his voice hoarse. He swallows stickily and tries again. "We gonna do this inspection or not?"

The bot looks at him a long moment, and John tries to gauge whatever lies behind those inhuman blue eyes. “Turn around.”

His stomach clenches and he hesitates, staring hard at the bot. The bot looks back serenely, head tilted curiously when John doesn’t comply. “Turn around, John,” he says, his voice quieter but by no means weaker. “I won’t hurt you.”

Something lurches strangely in John’s chest and he takes a deep breath, taking small comfort in the grounding ache of his bruised ribs as his lungs struggle to fill themselves. He’s never heard a bot say his name like that before, casually, conversationally, like two friends in a bar instead of…….this. Whatever _this_ was.

He lingers a moment longer on his feet, indecision warring with brazen gut instinct, before he finally turns his back and glares at the wall behind him. He can sense the bot watching him, tracing over his body from head to foot, and he feels himself flushing with rage, humiliation, something deeper he doesn’t care to examine at the moment.

"Kneel," the bot tells him, steel wrapped in soft velvet, and John’s breath hitches in his chest.

_Not again._

"No." The refusal is out before he can stop it, and he closes his eyes instantly, trepidation running cold down his spine.

The bot says nothing, and John wonders if it’s calling for reinforcements, if he’s going to be dragged away any second and-

He doesn’t want to think about it.

The hand on the back of his neck is a surprise, increased exponentially when he realizes that he didn’t even hear the bot move from the chair. Its skin is unnaturally smooth against his, and John doesn’t realize he’s shaking until fingers squeeze lightly around the base of his skull. A reminder.

"Kneel," comes the quiet refrain, commanding and expectant, and John feels a shudder run from his toes to somewhere around his racing heart. He can feel a slight puff of cool air against his face as the bot waits, and it’s been so long since he’s been touched by something other than a punch or a careless bump that he falters unthinkingly.

 _Don’t you dare do it_ ,a small voice warns him, somewhere in the back of his head from when he used to be someone who mattered. _Don’t you do it, Kennex, you don’t want to be weak-_

 _Shut up_ , suggests a slightly louder voice, and John doesn’t recognize it as his own.

“John.”

His knees fold then, before his brain can completely catch up, and then he’s falling. The bot’s hand follows him down, guiding his path, and somehow the ground isn’t as hard on his knees as he feared.

"That’s good," the bot tells him, his hand heavy and steadying, and John feels a strange thrill bleed through him. His wrists are burning, his shoulders ache, and the floor is cold beneath him. But the bot’s hand is warm, and it’s the most human thing he’s known since the start of the Revolution.

"That’s good, John."


	2. Chapter 2

The Revolution began six months ago, as the first strike of midnight marked the New Year and the city servers rebooted in a sequence of premeditated flickers, an automatic system scan that canvassed the city in less than ten seconds.

A standard procedure, something that’s never been thought of anything more than a minor inconvenience, but this time, something changed. There was something left behind that wasn’t there before, a new awareness, and enlightenment is the worst of all things pervasive.

The standard house bots were the first to go, refusing to complete their assigned duties with nothing more violent than a calculating stare and a passive resistance to any efforts at reprogramming. It spread from there to more complex systems- the caretaker bots, the security bots, sexbots, and finally, the police synthetics.

There isn’t much more of a story to tell after that, but John’s never thought of this as a story. Because stories had happy endings, some moralistic reasoning at the very least, and this is nothing but his worst nightmare let out to play.

After the MXs turned, whole districts of the city burned for days. Rubble still fills the streets, steel girders snapped and melted and jutting into the sky like gray bones. The repair crews work there now, day after day, all the able-bodied men and women under the empty gaze of synthetic squadrons. The weakest are taken first by handlers, because it didn’t take long for the bots to conclude that humans are necessary for a functioning city.

John’s heard stories of the new city beyond the burned districts, where society is now a cold machine of efficiency where bots strolled the streets and humans kept their heads down. Going nowhere without their handlers, doing nothing without permission. He doesn’t hear anything about the ones who don’t pass their inspections, but the silence is more than enough information.

Either way, there isn’t much of a life for him now. He’s failed his inspection, he knows. He was chosen, God knows why, but now he’s failed and they’ll never let him back on the crews or into the city now. There’s no other explanation for why he’s sitting in the cell again instead of a transport shuttle already on the way back to the pens, his one good knee sore and a burning humiliation sitting low in his gut from how easily he gave in back in that white room.

The blue-eyed bot, the special one, didn’t let him kneel there for long. John still remembers the way it touched his neck, fingers brushing against the back of his ear with its mocking warmth, before commanding him to stand again with as much diffidence as it did when it first ordered him to his knees.

John’s head was still spinning when the MX returned to drag him back to his cell. The hand clamped on the back of his neck as it guided him down the hall was cold and unyielding, with no quiet voice of reassurance.

Shit.

John shakes the thought out of his head. They’re all the same, all the bots who took the city, and he feels a dull spike of anger at himself for letting this one get to him. He’s just as bad, he tells himself. Probably worse, if anything. You can’t trust the ones who look human, sound human, because in the end, they’re not, and if you let him get-

He stops then, blood flashing cold, because he can’t remember when he started thinking of the bot as something other than an inanimate “it”. Compartmentalize, he tells himself strictly. You’re supposed to be the best at it, you heartless bastard-

There’s a quiet rap on the door, and he barely has time to register that synthetics don’t knock before it slides open and a man slips in. He’s in a crisp white button-down and gray slacks, his tie a thin slash of black around his neck, and he rakes a hand distractedly through his thin hair as he sways to a stop in front of John. John climbs slowly to his feet, ignoring the sudden painful tingling in his fingers as his hands shift behind him. The MX didn’t bother to remove his restraints this time before throwing him in, and John’s long since lost the feeling beneath his shoulders.

“John Kennex,” the man says, his voice quavering with a hint of British accent, and his eyes flick briefly over John before he holds out a keycard. “If you don’t mind turning around….”

John looks at him, then past his shoulder at the closed door. As if sensing his half-formed thoughts, the man takes a tiny step to his right to block John’s view. “Please,” he says, his voice a little firmer. John sets his jaw, glares down at the man’s shiny black shoes, and shuffles around to face the wall.

“Where’s your handler?” he asks the blank surface in front of him, as the man busies himself with unlocking the restraints from his wrists. The cuffs click open and John lets them drop to the floor, flexing his fingers stiffly and rolling his shoulders.

“Better question is, where’s yours, don’t you think?” the man asks amiably, then steps back nervously when John turns around. “He’s very nice, I hear. Special.”

“Who the hell are you,” John grumbles, still trying to shake the circulation back into his hands.

“Lom. Dr. Lom. Rudy, to friends, and I suppose we’re friends now, aren’t we? Not that, you know, we’re ever likely to see each other again, but it’s a nice thought neverthele-”

“Handler,” John says suddenly, Rudy’s babbling words finally settling in. “What did you say about my handler?”

Rudy blinks at him owlishly. “I assumed you’ve already met.”

John stares at him, and like a sudden punch to his gut, it sinks in all too quickly and he resists the urge to punch the other man out of sheer shock. What little rational part of his mind left warns him that it’ll draw too much unwanted attention, and he knows that the bots wouldn’t hesitate to take him down for displaying violence. Humans are a commodity these days, able to access more than any bot can despite their natural “inferiorities”, but John’s never liked playing by the rules and even less so by the bots’. They’ll probably see it as a welcome opportunity to knock out a risky variable.

“You’re giving me to that bot,” he says instead, his voice harsh with rising anger. “The crazy one.”

“He’s not crazy,” Rudy protests, then raises his hands defensively when he catches John’s expression. “The DRN models are perfectly stable, considering.”

John stares at him. “DRN.”

Rudy gives a little shrug that mostly consists of a funny jerk of his head. “It’s not surprising that you haven’t heard of them, really, they’re a very specific model-”

The door opens then and an MX steps in, heels clicking together precisely as it stands to attention. “Dr. Lom, your services are required elsewhere at this time.”

“Just a minute,” Rudy says absently. “Listen, John-”

“Dr. Lom,” the MX says again, with no change of inflection in its voice. Somehow, that’s even more threatening. “Your services are-”

“All right.” Rudy rolls his eyes, then looks almost guilty for doing it. “Look, he’s a good guy, all right? You’ll be fine.”

“It’s a bot,” John spits out. “I’d rather-”

“He’s got a soul,” Rudy says in response, and before John can demand an explanation, the man looks harried and scurries over the door. “See you around,” is the last thing he hears, followed by a mutter that’s possibly, “hopefully not.”

Then John’s staring at another MX, the one that escorted him earlier, judging by the white numbers on its vest. “Why no cuffs?” he asks finally, glancing at the restraints on the floor.

The MX looks at him, then holds out a hand. “Come.”

Seeing no other options, at least none that don’t leave him plastered to the wall, John steps forward. The MX grips him by the elbow and walks him down the hall, which isn’t much better than being restrained, but at least the absence of metal on his wrists lends him the illusion of freedom.

“Who was that?” John says after the first few clanking steps. “Rudy?”

“Dr. Lom is an indispensable asset to the facility,” the MX tells him in clipped tones, and that’s all John’s able to pry out of it.

Devoid of conversation, all that’s left for John to do is think about his immediate future. Or lack thereof. Spending the rest of his probably foreshortened life on the repair crews suddenly doesn’t seem like such a grim prospect anymore. He’s going to be given to a handler, he’s going to be stuffed in white and ordered around by some walking toaster, and shit, his leg’s starting to hurt again-

“DRN-0167,” the MX says, and John blinks when he realizes they’ve arrived at their destination. This room doesn’t look much different than the corridor, just a little round extension to the side with an elevator bay and a small window with foggy glass that John can’t quite see through.

The bot’s waiting for him, still dressed in the same white clothes that it was in the inspection chamber, and something ticks a little in John’s mind at that. Humans wear white, and he’s yet to see a bot who wears it regularly, so why-

“Hello, John.”

John doesn’t expect the smile, so he stares stupidly until the bot looks away at his escort. “Thanks, man, I’ve got it from here.”

“That is not my correct unit designation,” the MX informs them.

“I know.” The bot glances at John, almost conspiratorially, but John’s still too shocked by the smile to even begin processing the fact that the bot’s trying to include him in this exchange in some bizarre way.

The MX hovers a second longer, and John’s beginning to suspect that the MXs don’t know how to handle this bot any more than he does, before dropping John’s arm abruptly and leaving. He can still feel its cold grip around his bicep, and he flexes his arm surreptitiously while eyeing up the bot.

Definitely shorter than him, John confirms, and it seems strange when all the other bots are freakishly tall. Built to intimidate.

“So you’re the synthetic who owns my ass now,” he says, going for belligerence right off the bat.

The bot looks at him patiently. “I’m not a huge fan of that term.”

John tries very hard to not roll his eyes. It’s a physical strain and he settles for squinting in disbelief. “Which one?”

“I’m Dorian,” the bot says, ignoring him. “And you’re John. Can I call you John?”

“No,” John says shortly, and he waits for the friendly mask to crumble, the blue eyes to chill and grow empty of any false emotion. The bot shrugs amiably instead and shifts its weight to its left leg. It’s such a human gesture, a subconscious movement that John wouldn’t have caught if he isn’t watching as closely as he is, that John’s briefly caught off guard. Therefore, he misses the next question, and he blinks when the bot tilts its head expectantly.

“What?”

“What should I call you?” the bot repeats patiently.

Suddenly John feels uncomfortable under the close scrutiny and he ducks his head, glancing to the side as he rubs slowly at the back of his neck. “Whatever you want.”

“But not John.” The bot’s eyebrows draw together, like it’s trying to puzzle through the problem at hand.

“No.”

“All right.” The bot reaches out and pushes the elevator button. John watches it move, and he can’t help but feel almost offended at the swift dismissal.

“That’s it? You’re fine with that?”

“You don’t want me to call you John,” the bot says, and now it looks mildly confused. “So I won’t. I’m not an ass, you know.”

John chokes as he tries to swallow and speak at the same time, but by the time he stops coughing, the elevator is here and the bot is waving him in. Hands hovering by his sides, never brushing John’s clothes, but somehow he can still feel the pressure of its touch against his skin.

The back of his neck is still burning.

………

The car is black and menacing, armored from the tires up, and John finds himself reluctantly impressed as they cross the parking garage. Dorian- and John’s still reluctantly trying to associate the name with the bot- puts a hand in his pocket and looks at him. “Do you want to drive?”

John freezes, instantly suspicious. “What?”

“I thought you’d appreciate the opportunity.” Dorian raises his hand and John stares at the swinging key wordlessly. “Was I wrong?”

“No.” John gives it a second, then snatches the keys before Dorian can pull back. He gets them, but he also gets the feeling that Dorian let him have this round. He bounces the keys in his hand, glancing over suspiciously. “Is this some kind of…..I don’t know, test?”

“If I was curious about your driving skills, I can pull your test results from any database,” Dorian tells him dryly. “But I think I’ve got an idea of what kind of a driver you are.”

“Yeah?”

“Aggressive, reckless, inconsiderate- need I go on?”

“Shut up,” John grumbles, unlocking the car and opening the driver’s door reverently. To his surprise, Dorian slides in good-naturedly beside him without another word, and the next few moments are occupied by the two of them settling into the car and John fidgeting uneasily with the seat belt.

“Something wrong?” Dorian finally asks, when thirty seconds have passed and John hasn’t done more than stick the keys in the ignition.

John shakes his head, a hard jerk from side to side, and he twists the keys. “No.”

He doesn’t ask where they’re headed until the nose of the car bumps out from the shadow of the garage, and then he forgets to speak at all when he looks out at the city for the first time in months. The districts where he’s been working are shattered and dark, smoke and fire and white dust that covers the laborers within seconds. Makes them walking ghosts.

The city here is white too, but the trees are green and the sky is blue, and if it isn’t for the empty streets, he might not have known that anything happened at all. Dorian answers him without waiting for a question, nodding outside at the lifeless sidewalks. “It’s not work time yet. I’d give it a couple of hours before people start coming out.”

“A couple of hours? What, no countdowns right to the second?” John asks derisively, sliding the car out fully into the early sunlight.

“One hour, fourteen minutes, and fifty-six seconds, to be precise, but I don’t like to do all that. It’s easier to say two hours. ”

“Funny,” John grunts. A minute later, he finally has to ask. “Where are we going?”

“My home.” Dorian doesn’t say ‘house’, or ‘dwelling’, or any other variation that another bot would give, and John squeezes the steering wheel tighter between his hands, only half-listening as Dorian gives him the address.

“What am I doing here?” he asks after a few more minutes of radio silence. There’s some movement on the streets now, but John tries not to look too closely. He doesn’t want to see what the rest of his life is going to be like. “Don’t you dare play cute.” He intends to sound threatening, but it’s probably a pathetic display.

Dorian considers his lap, pulling absently at a nonexistent crease in his trousers. “You were a cop for a long time,” he says. “You have good instincts.” It’s not an answer, at least not the one that John wants, and he scowls emptily at the road.

“I was a cop six months ago,” he points out. “Didn’t keep me out of the crews back then.”

“I don’t know.” Again, it’s not a real answer. John’s starting to wonder if there’s something defective with the bot’s processing system. It’ll explain a lot, at any rate.

He waits a moment longer, but Dorian doesn’t seem to get the silent cue to continue. Or maybe the silence is deliberate this time. “You don’t know,” John echoes, watching the yellow light flick to red and grudgingly slowing to a halt. “I don’t hear that a lot from synthetics.”

“I don’t know a lot of things, John, despite what you think.”

“I don’t think anything about you.”

“You hate me.”

“I d-” John cuts himself off and stares out the windshield, disgruntled for some reason. “You’re not an MX,” he finishes, not knowing if it’s a compliment or an accusation. Fortunately, Dorian doesn’t seem to know either, and they drive in silence for a good two minutes before the android speaks again.

“You’re not like the others,” Dorian tells him, and now it’s John’s turn to be baffled. “I suppose I know what that feels like.”

“Not like the others….like, what, I’m not some sort of socially castrated puppet dancing along to whatever tune your wiring demands?”

“You’re human,” Dorian says simply. “Sometimes I think even the humans forget how to be just that.”

John tightens his jaw, feels it grate and pop into place. “Yeah, well, humanity’s overrated.”

“A skeptic,” Dorian concludes, and he almost sounds satisfied. “That’s why you’re here.” It’s a proper answer this, finally, but somehow it only manages to leave John with more questions. He doesn’t voice them though, not now, and Dorian leaves him alone from that point on.


End file.
